Archives & Special Collections

Links to Other Archives and Special Collections

Archives and Special Collections: Resources in the Twin Cities

Minnesota Historical Society
Search the historical society's library and special collections in a range of subject areas, including the Visual Resources database. This is an invaluable online collection of digitized images from photographs, postcards, paintings and other visual materials.

Hennepin County Library - Minneapolis Special Collections
The Special Collections department holds materials that are especially pertinent to the research of Minneapolis history. Links to over 25,000 books and other materials in ten special collections. In addition to the Special Collections department site, there is an online database of digitized historic photographs from library collections.

Minnesota Reflections
Minnesota Reflections is the initial digitization effort of the Minnesota Digital Library Coalition. This digitization project involved more than 50 participating historical societies, special archives, and libraries. This resource contains thousands of digitized photographs from a wide variety of libraries and historical societies around the state.

Hennepin History Museum
The Hennepin History Museum collections include objects such as toys and dolls, quilts, Native American artifacts, household items, decorative arts objects and costumes, in addition to collections of personal papers, photographs, and business and government documents.

Ramsey County Historical Society
The society's website contains general information on their collections, which include books, maps and atlases, personnel papers and organizational records, periodicals, directories and photographs. Link to online information about St. Paul neighborhoods.

The Bakken Library and Museum
The Bakken is a center for education and learning that furthers the understanding of the history, cultural context, and applications of electricity and magnetism in the life sciences and their benefits to contemporary society.
In addition to these sources, there are a number of other local, city, or county historical societies that maintain web sites for researchers. The following are some examples:

Archives and Special Collections: National and International Resources
Note: University students, faculty and staff need to connect to some of these sites via the University Libraries home page to facilitate access to the information; University of Minnesota x-500 authentification is required for some of these sites when using non-University computers.